


Wouldn't it be a Thing (To Live Somewhere Quietly)

by CarthageBurning



Category: Peaky Blinders (TV)
Genre: Canonical Child Abuse, Gen, Romani Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-18
Updated: 2015-02-18
Packaged: 2018-03-13 13:15:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3382892
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CarthageBurning/pseuds/CarthageBurning
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They're her children too, and she's tired of seeing them hurt.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wouldn't it be a Thing (To Live Somewhere Quietly)

Every morning Polly reads the papers and has a cup of tea, black with two sugars. She's carefully scanning the Harrods ads, looking for anything nice to wear on a Saturday when the floorboards creak. She can hear a small sniffle, pitiful and very young sounding. She looks up, and grinds her teeth together. The bastard's done it again.  
*  
"Pol." He's in the doorway, and there's blood pouring from his nose onto the rough floorboards, drip, drip, _drip _._  
_

"Oh Tommy," She mutters, standing and snuffing out her cigarette in the porcelain ashtray on the table. She draws him against her chest like he's nine again, instead of almost a man at seventeen. Her hands find his head, and she pulls him into her shoulder, pretends he's not so tall now.  
"I'm going to kill him someday," He growls into her hair, his voice shaky. She doesn't mention how his shoulders heave, how his hands are digging into the fabric of her dress. "He wanted to hit John, but I wouldn't let him. I'll never let him touch us again, even if I have to slit his throat."  
Her heart almost breaks then and there, at the thought of her Tommy taking a life. Polly remembers when they'd had to shoot a horse last year, when the thing'd gone lame. She remembers how his eyes had gone glassy with tears, how she'd heard him crying at night, thick hiccuping sobs.  
"You won't have to, darling. I promise you, he'll not touch you again." He snuffles into her dress, and if it were anyone else she'd have them on their ass in a few seconds flat for ruining her silks. "Your mother would be ashamed that I've let this go on so long. I should have shot him in the head the first time he bloodied your nose."  
Tommy's mother, bless her soul, always too much a believer in love. Polly can see it reflected in Ada's eyes, in John's, even in the wide pale eyes of the boy crying into her neck. She'd believed in love, and what had she gotten? Polly remembers the high collared dresses she wore, and how she cried every Sunday in church. Love didn’t get you anywhere with men like that, with rage and whiskey in their gut. She’d been married to such a man after all, but she’d sworn never again. How blind she’d been, to let her family, her children, suffer as she had. A cold rage fills her gut, and she moves Tommy's head till she's staring into reddened eyes. He wipes his nose with his sleeve. "You won't do anything, you hear? I will."  
She makes him a strong cup of tea, cut with a little whiskey, grabs the sharpest knife from the chopping block.  
*  
That night she cuts her brother's face open, hands him a bag and five quid, shows him the door.  
"You won't ruin them, you hear?" She growls, steadies her hand on the knife. "You come near any of the children again and I'll have your fucking balls."  
Then Polly slams the door, washes the knife. She moves up the stairs, careful to keep quiet, stepping on the edges of the floor boards. She checks on Ada first and tucks her into bed, then John who’s out like a light. Arthur's still awake, and he looks angry, lost. She just nods, closes the door with a “He’s gone.”. Tommy's curled up in his blankets, twitching as if he's running in a dream. She licks her thumb, cleans the dried blood off his face, then she moves to her own room and takes a long bath, washes her brother’s cigarette smoke from her hair for the last time.  
*  
A week later, Sarah Cobb from down the road brings a blonde child in a laundry hamper to their door. He's got her brother's dark eyes and a fine dusting of sandy hair. Polly curses, seems Arthur Shelby had left one last gift for her after all.  
"Your brother," Sarah pauses, and Polly can see how young she is, seventeen at most. Tommy's age. "His father... He's run off. I can't take care of him, I'm not married, and I've got a job at the new BSA factory down the road."  
Polly takes the boy from the wicker basket, tucks him against her hip, hands the hamper back to the girl. She looks relieved, Polly thinks. Stupid girl hadn't the head to get rid of it before it was born.  
"His name is Finn." Polly nods, moving to shut the door. Sarah's hand flies out, stops the door from closing. "His father owes me fifty pounds."  
Polly laughs then, loud and joyless. She pries the girl's hand off the wood, sets it at her side.  
"Yeah," She says "He owes a lot of people a lot of things." Then she shuts the door and ignores how her eyes are stinging.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "Were You Happy? (And How Long has that Been)" by Laura Marling  
> I feel like Tommy cried easily as kid, for no particular reason?


End file.
